How does a designer take notes? Martial Leiter’s notebooks
Martial Leiter is an artist renowned for the virtuosity of his brushstrokes, and since the 1970s he has been the author of a prolific and multi-faceted body of work. With a diploma in technical drawing, he taught himself artistic drawing from an early age. A connoisseur of art history and an uncompromising observer of society, he has published extensively in Swiss, German and French daily newspapers, but he also developed his work as a freelance artist early on. The two facets of his work evolved in parallel until the 2000s – one, in the realm of political and social criticism, was expressed mainly in the press, and came to a virtual standstill between 2000 and 2010; the other, “free”, was the subject of numerous exhibitions and publications, and continues to be constantly renewed, right up to the present day, in multiple registers and techniques.
In December 2021, BCUL acquired, with the help of the Friends of BCU Lausanne, a batch of 90 sketchbooks by Martial Leiter representing the core of his work for the press, as well as a set of sketches on loose sheets. These preparatory sketches (1972-2016) trace the artist’s modus operandi and the genesis of his work. They feature rapid or more developed annotations of his ideas, mainly in black ink, in a style sometimes akin to calligraphy. For their author, these notebooks are a manuscript-like apparatus of notes from which his various projects emanate, a crucible to which he returned again and again. The free, lively style of the sketches contrasts with the final version printed in the newspapers, which is highly structured and made up of tight lines and braces. Critics have widely noted the way in which the “Raster mode” of Martial Leiter’s political drawings, aesthetically close to classical engraving, brings out the acuity and wry humor of the subject matter.
This manuscript corpus is accompanied by extensive documentation that helps us to better understand and contextualize the sketches and evolution of Martial Leiter’s work: daily newspapers, magazines and satirical journals from the 1970s to the 2010s, newsletters, programs, posters and books. The variety of publications reveals not only the diversity of the cartoonist’s editorial collaborations, but also his status as a maverick, refusing to be part of any editorial team and asserting an unsubmissive authorial status for which he sometimes paid dearly. Among the most striking publications preserved in Martial Leiter’s archives are covers for the magazine Einspruch (1987-1991) founded by Max Frisch and Alexandre J. Seiler, various collaborations with journalist Niklaus Meienberg and a regular carte blanche for Le Monde (1995-2002).
The Fonds Martial Leiter (IS 5923), held in the BCUL’s Manuscript Department, was classified, inventoried and repackaged during 2022. The work was carried out in close collaboration with the draftsman, who provided a wealth of information to help document his archives and made several additional contributions. The collection is now available for consultation, and its inventory is accessible on the Patrinum platform. As a lure, three notebooks can be leafed through virtually – an invitation to our readers to come and discover with their own eyes a hitherto hidden aspect of the work of a renowned artist.
Caroline Recher
